Spirits of Chaos

Growing up, I always felt as if I were being followed, even when I was all alone. I spoke to my mom about it once, but she brushed it off as me being paranoid. She was always dismissive. When I reached my teen years, the voices grew more incessant. One day, I locked myself in my room and called out to whoever was there.

“Over here,” one voice said.

I turned to my left and found an odd figure. They were nearly shapeless: a mere undulating mass of smoke that barely held a humanoid form.

“What are you?” I asked.

“She’s a spirit of discord,” another voice said.

I turned to my right and found another figure before me.

“If anyone’s a spirit of discord, it’d be her,” the first voice said. “My name’s Ryzele, and that is Grinnyr.”

“I am a guiding spirit, but she is a trickster,” Grinnyr said.

“You liar!” Ryzele said.

The two spirits began to argue. I asked them to shut up and stormed out of the room. Their arguing became a recurring event of my daily life. Throughout highschool and even into my early work years in another city, their debates would grow louder and fiercer—so fierce that, at times, I would yell at them without realising that those around me could not perceive them. This led to my coworkers and friends asking me to see a psychiatrist, which I did just to stop hearing their concerns.

But the voices never stopped: Ryzele and Grinnyr persisted in the weeks that followed, which led me to discontinue my sessions just after a month. The more they argued, the angrier and more exhausted I became; at one point, I decided to quit my job and move back to my hometown to work as a freelance writer. But without going to my mom’s house, I decided to first stay at my grandma’s for a week as it had been ages since I last saw her. The moment I walked up to her door, however, Ryzele and Grinnyr fell unnaturally silent.

“What’s wrong with you two all of a sudden?” I asked.

“We… We don’t want to go in there,” Ryzele said.

“Yes, best we head straight to your mom’s,” Grinnyr said.

I found this behaviour strange. What about Grandma’s place was so unnerving? Could it be…?

I went against their words and walked into Grandma’s house. The two spirits all but disappeared from my sight as I did so. Something about Grandma or her house warded them off. I spoke to her about it the second she greeted me. I had blurry memories of her speaking to me about spirits when I was still in preschool.

“Hon, those are spirits of chaos. Given the right circumstances, they could push anyone over the ledge. We need to rid you of them at once,” Grandma said. According to her, they slowly syphon people’s energy and, eventually, their very sanity.

Grandma pulled out several books from her basement; among them was a book that had the spell to break Ryzele and Grinnyr’s connection to me and drive them away for good. Thirty minutes later, it was as if a heavy load had been lifted from the very fibres of my being. I never saw another spirit after that day.